Grants:Project/Rapid/In Search of The Roots/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2023-24 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

• To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/In Search of The Roots.
• You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
• You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

Yes, the organizing team is satisfied with the project outcomes. Most of the primary goals have been met and most importantly, as we mentioned in the third goal of the project's grant proposal, this small grant has been worked as a catalyst to sustain organized wikimedia activities among the youth population of Bangladesh.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets. Please be sure to review and provide metrics required for Rapid Grants.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
Participants: 20	20+	The audience targeted (participants of the Notre Dame Workshop and Editathon 2020) had previously received an introduction to Wikipedia editing through an outreach program. This project served as practical training for them, providing exposure to the broader GLAM sphere within Wikimedia, extending beyond on-wiki editing. It successfully transitioned these novice Wikipedians into Wikimedians, many of whom are presently engaged as outreach trainers themselves. These participants comprised the inaugural cohort from the educational institution, later establishing the first executive committee of NDEC WERT.
Commons upload: 100+	300	The uploads can be found in the respective commons category. This project was basically a GLAM project where the team worked to visually document the institution, and the institution authority also donated 150 old and historical media files under CC BY SA 4.0. The outputs exceeded our expectations. The files have been used in 37 wikimedia project pages, and received a total view of 3K+ so far.

More details regarding the project outcomes can be found in the meta wiki page of this project.

Gallery

Top picks from the images donated by the Notre Dame College authority

• 
  A batch of student of Notre Dame College, Dhaka in 1953
• 
  UN and Red Cross flags waving atop Notre Dame College in 1971. The institution was declared as a neutral and conflict free zone during the war of independence of Bangladesh in 1971.
• 
  Former NDC principal Richard William Timm in the midair to join a relief mission in Bangladesh.
• 
  Former NDC principal receiving Pope John Paul II at Dhaka airport.

Fieldworks done by ISOTR team

• The cinematography!
• 
  A part of the team.
• 
  Videographers taking shots.
• 
  Team's media director and editor discussing the taken shots

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

• What worked well?

The plan to provide the new wikimedians with a hands on experience of wikimedia GLAM work, building partnership with the educational institution authority and raising wikimedia awareness worked amazingly. We were able to digitize five rare books, (one of them had only 5/6 copies in the whole country) which have been later used to improve wikipedia articles. The books weren't published under free license due to copyright complexities but they did help providing rare information. These books were handy in improving the bnwiki article of Notre Dame College, Dhaka, which is currently one of the nine featured articles on the project.

• What did not work so well?

Engaging in GLAM activities introduced us to a realm marked by inherent uncertainties, presenting a new experience. Additionally, the estimated output fell short of initial evaluations. Guaranteeing the on-wiki impact of GLAM outputs necessitates in depth planning and separate on-wiki campaigns, aspects we encountered challenges in effectively strategizing.

• What would you do differently next time?

We'll improve our capacity for GLAM projects (we've increased that significantly in the last few years after this project was completed). We'll also include onwiki campaigns in any GLAM or media collection project (which we did a few days ago after learning from this project). Also, we'll improve our capacity to track onwiki impacts which needs specialized knowledge. (We're on our way to achieve that goal. One of our group members have completed Organizers' lab in 2022 and another one is taking the course currently as of December, 2023).

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

The specified sum of 75 USD, intended for conveyance (25 USD), food (25 USD), and other miscellaneous expenses (25 USD), has been entirely utilized for conveyance purposes. The remaining expenses have been privately financed by the project organizers.

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

No. We allocated over a thousand USD beyond the proposed budget to ensure the success of this project, sourced from our personal finances.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

Participants of this project later founded Project Korikath from their experience of working with media files in wikimedia. According to a diff blog published on September, 2023,

The project has 17.5k+ images and videos, 350+ of them are quality images on Commons, three of them are valued, one is featured (also commons POTD), and one video was used as the “media of the day” on 5 March, 2023. The media files have been used in over 3k Wikimedia project pages and received a total view count of an overwhelming number of over 6 million so far. The project has over 50 members from seven countries who collectively can communicate in 11 languages. And the best part is, most of them are young and high schoolers. The members have together conducted more than 50 photo walks, 3 photo tours and one Wikipedia editing campaign – everything without any grant support from the Wikimedia Foundation.